Expedient Healthcare, which owns and operates home service health test platform Healthians, has raised about Rs 20 crore in a new round of funding led by Japanese early-stage investor Beenext.

The company, which operates in the national capital region, will use the funds to expand operations to Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, according to Deepak Sahni, chief executive of Healthians. Beenos and Digital Garage have also entered the startup's investor cap table, he said.

“We will be using a significant portion to improve the technology at the lab end, which, historically, has rarely seen any innovation till date,” Sahni told ET. “We have also started our groundwork regarding expansion, and we should be in the new cities by the first quarter of calendar year 2017.”

The Gurgaon-based venture, which aggregates local pathology laboratories on its platform, competes with a number of diagnostics chains, including publicly-listed Dr Lal PathLabs, and Fortis Healthcare-controlled SRL Ltd, in a hyper-competitive yet highly-fragmented sector.

More recently, the Dalmia Group also announced its entry into the space, launching ‘Dalmia Medicare’ in August.

Founded by Sahni in 2014, Healthians has raised about Rs 23 crore till date. The company, which initially started as an aggregator of laboratories, has now pivoted into an umbrella brand, providing software, hardware and quality management support to them. In Delhi-NCR, the company has six labs under the Healthians brand.

“We expect to have at least 40 labs under our brand by March next year, as we establish ourselves across the country,” Sahni said, adding that the company aims to add over 200 labs and 3,000 phlebotomists across 30 cities over the next 12-18 months.

According to Sahni, the startup has over 150,000 customers and gets about 1,000-1,200 requests on a daily basis. The average charge for a test on the Healthians platform is Rs 950, according to Sahni, a Manipal University alumnus.

E-commerce company and investor Beenos and venture capital firm Beenext, both of which was founded by Japanese investor Teruhide Sato, have emerged as among the most active early-stage investors in India, having backed a number of prominent startups, including online marketplace for used automobiles, Droom, and peer-to-peer rentals venture NoBroker.

Additionally, Tokyo-based incubator and investor Digital Garage has also been active in the country’s investment landscape. In September, the investor, along with Sequoia Capital India, participated in a $8-million equity financing round in Singapore-based fashion and lifestyle marketplace Zilingo.